I have mixed feelings about this synth. The concept is nice, the support is good, and the MIDI implementation is great. The only part really lacking is sound. I was hoping for the old Wasp analog sound. What I get seems to sound like a Wasp played over a transistor radio with a 2 inch speaker. There is no life to the sounds. It’s just there. This does not render the synth useless, but it does give it a narrow focus. If you want a song intro with that sounds like it came from a radio, this is the synth. If you want a synth that blends in with other products and gives viable sounds, Wasp is relegated to a few sound effects.Read more

Dash Synthesis seem to have found a winning formula - at least from my perspective. They follow one of the all-time great rules, which is "Keep it simple." They have small, but fun synths at very reasonable prices.

This synth, daHornet, is all kinds of funky. Loading it up and playing the first few notes, I suddenly found myself in the world of Logan's Run - and all the other sci-fi movies from that era. It's not restricted to that, though. A little playing around got me a respectable accordion sound. That may not sound like a good thing to some, but the point is that it's not as limited a synth as one might think.

Where this thing really shines, however, is the in the way-out wacky sounds. A lot of those are towards the end of the presets, but they're really not hard to dial up yourself. Check out "Man in a hive."

daHornet is laid out nicely, with a logical flow to the buttons. Right-clicking on the logo brings up a menu that has some options you might want to check out. I found that the volume level was a little too high for Cubase and a number of the presets were clipping. A quick trip to this menu and I set the volume to "soft" - perfect! There are also four different randoms, each of which can be assigned to the numbers 1-4 on your keyboard. A nice touch, indeed.

I have no complaints with daHornet. Sorry. It's a niche synth, but it's a very well-executed one. It's easy to download and check out. It's fun to play with. It's easy and cheap to buy. And the support from Dash Synthesis is second to none.Read more

This is a pretty nice little synth. It's different, and it sounds great which is why I purchased a copy. It's easy to get really warm/dirty analog-style sounds. The random patch generator is really top-notch. You can choose from "pad", "lead", "bass", or "fx" style patches. I was able to get several useful new patches in a few minutes. MIDI Learn is available on all of the controls; this is a feature I think ALL software instruments should have.

But the part I like the most is that dirty, nasty sound. I love analog grit, and this little sucker puts out a fairly convincing range of those types of sounds. I've never used the original hardware version of this synth, so I can't say whether it's an authentic reproduction. I liked what I heard, though. The price is fantastic, I feel I got more than my money's worth with daHornet. Their online purchasing is quick, too. Within 5 minutes I had the full version up and running.Read more

This thing really grows on me. It has actually become one of my favorite plugins. I can hardly believe it myself.

As a betatester, I've been tamed by the dash guys. I used to like synths that make sound pierces through the eardrums and cuts the mix like a knife. I still do, but now I'm also deeply fond of the milder sound these dash VSTis make. All dash VSTis so far have one thing in common: the sound that makes me feel cozy and warm, be it daAlfa2k, Combosister, or this daHornet.

IMO, daHornet has the similar sound charachter to Oddity, as they both are modelled after vintage synths around the same period. daHornet is very very capable of making some "crappy" crazy noises that no other VSTi can do easily. That's my first impression of it.

I LOVE that kind of noise.

The presets are good. The patch generator is good too, but I find tweaking the knobs is much much more fun.

Beware: the row of the table shows a serial number to copy-paste. Nothing illegal, daHornet had been created to be purchased but when it became freeware later, the dll has not been recompiled, so this serial number is provided to use it since that day it became freeware.